Supreme Court strikes down mandatory life sentences for juveniles

WASHINGTON -- States cannot automatically sentence juveniles to life in prison without parole after the U.S. Supreme Court decided Monday that most children still deserve a chance at rehabilitation.

The 5-4 decision was based in part on an Alabama case in which a 14-year-old was convicted of arson and murder and was immediately sent away with no hope for release and no consideration of his age, upbringing or the details of the crime. The justices said such mandatory sentences violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

"Under these schemes, every juvenile will receive the same sentence as every other -- the 17-year-old and the 14-year-old, the shooter and the accomplice, the child from a stable household and the child from a chaotic and abusive one," according to the opinion written by Justice Elena Kagan.

Monday's ruling means juveniles now serving mandatory life-without-parole sentences will be able to go back to court and have a full-blown sentencing hearing, where the judge will have newfound discretion about whether they deserve a sentence that allows some chance for parole. The decision does not ban all life-without-parole sentences for people 17 or younger; it just requires that they not be mandatory.

It is another in a series of cases in which the nation's highest court has protected juvenile offenders from the harshest of punishments.

"This decision is an incredibly important step forward in recognizing what I regard as one of the great tragedies of the American criminal justice system," said Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative who argued the cases in March on behalf of two juveniles from Alabama and Arkansas.

Alabama case

In the Alabama case, Evan Miller, now age 23 and an inmate at the St. Clair Correctional Facility, will return to a courtroom in Lawrence County where he was originally convicted and sentenced nine years ago in the death of his neighbor, Cole Cannon.

"He's thrilled," Stevenson said. "But for so many of the kids who were told they will die in prison ... it's a very challenging thing to embrace."

The majority opinion from the Supreme Court, which was endorsed by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer, included some horrific details of Miller's case and a suggestion that he is a prime candidate for a lesser punishment. The justices noted that Miller was high on drugs and alcohol consumed with the adult victim at the time of the murder, and that his childhood was brutal.

"Miller's stepfather physically abused him; his alcoholic and drug-addicted mother neglected him; he had been in and out of foster care as a result; and he had tried to kill himself four times, the first when he should have been in kindergarten," according to the ruling. "That Miller deserved severe punishment for killing Cole Cannon is beyond question. But once again, a sentencer needed to examine all these circumstances before concluding that life without any possibility of parole was the appropriate penalty."

Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, whose office defended mandatory life-in-prison sentences for juveniles, said he disagrees with the court's ruling and the assertion that Miller will wind up with a lighter sentence.

"Miller will have a new sentencing hearing, but in light of the facts of his case, the prosecution will have a compelling argument that he should receive a life-without-parole sentence," Strange said in a prepared statement.

Strange said he was pleased that the court did not issue a categorical ban on all life-without-parole sentences for juveniles, and that prosecutors can still ask for the sentence in cases where they think it is appropriate.

But Stevenson, in a conference call with reporters on Monday, said the court's opinion also warns that future life-without-parole sentences for juveniles should be rare. Most of the 2,300 people serving life-without-parole sentences for crimes committed when they were juveniles are from states where the sentence was mandatory, meaning other states don't often impose it.

"But given all we have said in (previous cases) and this decision about children's diminished culpability and heightened capacity for change, we think appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to this harshest possible penalty will be uncommon," Kagan wrote.

There were several pages of dissenting opinions from the justices in the minority: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

Alito in his dissent said the 28 state legislatures that require the sentence of life without parole for juveniles convicted of murder were reflecting the views of those who elected them "that the risk that these offenders will kill again outweighs any countervailing consideration, including reduced culpability due to immaturity or the possibility of rehabilitation."

"When the majority of this court countermands that democratic decision, what the majority is saying is that members of society must be exposed to the risk that these convicted murderers, if released from custody, will murder again," Alito wrote.